This book sets out to address the currently under-theorised legal and governance challenges presented by the emergence of the 'Anthropocene' as a new geological epoch.

While the epoch has yet to be formally confirmed, the trope and discourse of the Anthropocene undoubtedly already confronts law, governance and environmental law scholars with a unique challenge concerning the need to question, and ultimately re-imagine, the current legal imaginary and its juristic and governance interventions in the light of a new socio-ecological situation, the signs of which are increasingly urgent.

This book invites an unrivalled group of leading environmental legal thinkers to reflect upon the Anthropocene and the implications of its discursive formation in an attempt to trace some initial, future-facing and imaginative implications for law and governance.

In doing so, it specifically highlights the various discomforting conversations, explicated by these authors, and the tensions between them, that are now arising in the domain of Anthropocene and juridical discourse.